Being a one time toxophilist myself I know a fair bit about what a bowman would give his right arm for :-) I've shot a yew bow and they're bloody hard to pull. The average non-compound bow (if you can find one these days) has a pulling strain of around 35-40 lbs. Yew long bows easily exceed 60lbs - some are up to 80 or 90 lbs. There aren't many folks around today that could even think of pulling one of those. One thing you would not have wanted to do was pick a fight with the right arm of a Welsh bowman!
Please don't make it personal and attack my every post (you've done it a few times now) - it ain't worth it, is it? Try reading the whole web page and take note of the 'too many knots in British yew trees' bit and that a tax was levied. The tax forcing all merchants to carry yew staves back into Britain is well documented - hey, they even mentioned it on Time Team the once, what more proof could you want? :-) I never said British bowmen were crap, just the British yews weren't that well suited to the job. We all know the bowmen were the best (but then we wrote history didn't we).
